Apple market share drops slightly in the past year

Don't look now, but Apple's slow market share incline may have just turned into a slow decline. Not only does a new report by research and advisory company Gartner, Inc say that Apple's market share in the US slipped just a little bit over the past year (from 7.5% to 7.4%), but that as you can see above, there's a steep little decline from the 8% it was in the last quarter of 2008. The PC market overall is down as well, a 6.5% decline since the beginning of last year.

Does that mean it's time to sell the AAPL stock? Probably not -- as you can see from the graph, there's still been a nice steady growth in market share since 2006, and the current economy has all ships falling a little bit with the tide as it goes out. But it does mean that Apple might be having more trouble than they want breaking out into more of the market. If that is their goal anyway -- Gartner's report also notes that Apple's relatively higher ASP (Average Selling Price) "created challenges for it in the tough economy," but when have we ever known them to go cheap?

So Apple's not up in the short term, but who is? Well maybe Goldman Sachs is. But we don't entirely trust those guys. And in case you're wondering: none of this is actual financial advice, and none of it should be used to make any decisions that might lose you money. You've been warned.